Why Franchise Agreements need to evolve

We have recently been through the process of updating our franchise agreement and I’m really proud to see the story of its evolution covered in the The BFA Magazine https://www.thebfa.org/the-bfa-magazine/#bfa-magazine-april-24/60/.

It’s all too easy for these legal documents to become ‘legacy’ pieces – laboured over at launch and then left untouched.

Our previous franchise agreement had been in place for around 10 years. In that time our model had evolved as had legislation and the agreement we had was in need of review. We also wanted to ensure that the new document reflected franchising best practices.

But it’s a big deal, quite rightly, for our franchise owners and I can understand that there would be some apprehension around such a key document being reviewed.

Collaboration is key and rather than work in isolation at National Office, we opted for full transparency and discourse to arrive at a new agreement that served the purposes of us, the franchisor, as well as our franchisees.

Special mentions to Bird & Bird who drafted the new agreement and shared their invaluable experience. To Ruth Brown QFP and Ben Damm who worked alongside me on this. And huge thanks to our franchisee ‘panel’ which represented the interests of the network: Suhail Rehman Chris Lye and Suki Dehal QFP .

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